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BEHRAMPUR, India -- A massive, powerful cyclone was hammering India's eastern coastline with
heavy rains and destructive winds today, as hundreds of thousands of people living in the region
moved inland and took shelter, hoping to ride out the dangerous storm.

Roads were all but empty as high waves lashed the coastline of Orissa state, which will bear
the brunt of Cyclone Phailin. By midafternoon, wind gusts were so strong that they could blow over
grown men. Along the coast, seawater was pushing inland, swamping villages where many people
survive as subsistence farmers in mud and thatch huts.

As the cyclone swept across the Bay of Bengal toward the Indian coast, satellite images
showed its spinning tails covering an area larger than France. Images appeared to show the storm
making landfall early tonight.

In Behrampur, a town about 7 miles inland from where the eye of the storm was expected to
hit, the sky blackened quickly around the time of landfall, with heavy winds and rains pelting the
empty streets.

Estimates of the storm's power had dropped slightly, with the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon
Warning Center in Hawaii showing maximum sustained winds of about 150 miles per hour, with gusts up
to 184 mph.

The storm, though, remained exceedingly strong and dangerous. By last evening, some 420,000
people had been moved to higher ground or shelters in Orissa, and 100,000 more in neighboring
Andhra Pradesh, said Indian Home Secretary Anil Goswami.

"A storm this large can't peter out that fast," said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at Weather
Bell, a private U.S. weather firm. "There's nothing to stop it at this point."

L.S. Rathore, the head of the Indian Meteorological Department, predicted a storm surge of
10-11.5 feet, but Maue said that even in the best-case scenario there would be a surge of 20-30
feet.

A storm surge - the giant wall of water that that a cyclone blasts ashore - is the big killer
in such storms.

Phailin already has been large and powerful for nearly 36 hours, he said, and those winds
have built up a tremendous amount of surge.

A few hours before the storm was to hit, about 200 villagers were jammed into a two-room
schoolhouse in the village of Subalaya, about 20 miles from the coast, where local emergency
officials were distributing food and water. The roads were almost completely empty of traffic, but
two trucks pulled up to the school with more evacuees. Children shivered in the rain as they
stepped down from the vehicles, following women carrying bags jammed with possessions.

Many of the people had fled low-lying villages for the shelter of the concrete school. But
some had also left behind relatives who feared the storm could wipe out lifetimes of work.

"My son had to stay back with his wife because of the cattle and belongings," said
70-year-old Kaushalya Jena, weeping in fear inside the makeshift shelter. "I don't know if they are
safe."

In Bhubaneshwar, the Orissa state capital, government workers and volunteers were putting
together hundreds of thousands of food packages to be distributed at relief camps.

The state's top official, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, appealed for people to leave their
homes if they are ordered.

"I request everyone to not panic. Please assist the government. Everyone from the village to
the state headquarters have been put on alert," he told reporters.

Surya Narayan Patro, the state's top disaster management official, said tens of thousands of
more people would be moved to safer areas before the cyclone hits. "No one will be allowed to stay
in mud and thatched houses in the coastal areas," he said.

The sea had already pushed inland as much as 130 feet along parts of the coastline by this
afternoon.

Officials in both Orissa and Andhra Pradesh have been stockpiling emergency food supplies and
setting up shelters for evacuees. The Indian military has put some of its forces on alert, and has
trucks, transport planes and helicopters at the ready for relief operations.

In Paradip, the Orissa port city hammered in a 1999 cyclone, at least seven ships were moved
out to sea to ride out the storm, with other boats shifted to safer parts of the harbor, officials
said.

The storm is expected to cause large-scale power and communications outages and shut down
road and rail links, officials said. It's also expected to cause extensive damage to crops.

U.S. forecasters repeatedly warned the storm would be immense.

"If it's not a record, it's really, really close," University of Miami hurricane researcher
Brian McNoldy told The Associated Press. "You really don't get storms stronger than this anywhere
in the world ever. This is the top of the barrel."

To compare it to killer U.S. storms, McNoldy said Phailin is nearly the size of Hurricane
Katrina, which killed 1,200 people in 2005 and caused devastating flooding in New Orleans, but also
has the wind power of 1992's Hurricane Andrew, which packed 165 mph winds at landfall in Miami.

The Indian government said some 12 million people would be affected by the storm, though that
number included millions living far from the coast.

The Bay of Bengal has been the scene of some of the deadliest storms in recent history. The
1999 Orissa cyclone, which was similar in strength to Phailin, killed 10,000 people.